Why did I ever think it was difficult to be an art teacher? The answer to that is obviously propaganda and misinformation from currently-employed art teachers who don’t want the rest of us to find out what a doddle it is.
I turned up this morning in some trepidation for my first art class, consoling myself with the fact that as the classroom has no walls, I could at least run away if it all went horribly wrong.
I quickly produced my masterpiece on the whiteboard:
and they got it immediately AND understood all my drawings. Then they set about producing their own with all sorts of things that they like (bees, butterflies, AK-47s) and don’t like (lions, snakes and bicycle accidents), and I was rather proud of their efforts.
When the afternoon class of horrors arrived, I immediately turned into The Bardenator – a name once given to me by some of my naughtier pupils – and spent the lesson alternately glaring and confiscating rubber bands, rubbers, string and everything else they’d rather play with than get on with their work. And even this lot managed to produce some decent pictures.
So that’s art done and dusted … just geography, maths, science and games to go.
There’s a lot of choral repetition at school here, and with open classrooms there’s no soundproofing and you can hear every class around the school bellowing unintelligibly like some sort of under-rehearsed Greek chorus. But at the end of the day they all chant the same thing in every classroom. ‘Thank you, teacher, see you tomorrow. Good luck for you, good dreams for me.’ I think that’s rather lovely.